"Resisting Divide-and-Conquer Strategies in Education: Pathways and Possibilities" examines the ways in which divide-and-conquer strategies operate in the American public education system. In U.S. education, these mechanisms are endemic and enduring, if not always evident. Coordinated, strategic, well-funded, politically-viable campaigns…

In this article, the author historicizes the argument about Black Language in the classroom to contextualize the contemporary linguistic inequities that Black students experience in English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. Next, the author describes "anti-black linguistic racism" and interrogates the notion of academic language. Following…

Through this piece, we draw upon critical race theory and Collins's Afrocentric feminist epistemology to highlight the importance of storytelling as a knowledge validation system in Black women's language. We illuminate and analyze a dialogic performance of two Black female literacy scholars in a coffee house "sipping tea," sharing…

In this article, Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa critique appropriateness-based approaches to language diversity in education. Those who subscribe to these approaches conceptualize standardized linguistic practices as an objective set of linguistic forms that are appropriate for an academic setting. In contrast, Flores and Rosa highlight the…

Reading and reflecting upon ethnically unfamiliar literature can provide opportunities for teacher candidates to critically examine assumptions of self and other relative to racial, cultural, and linguistic identities. However, ethnically unfamiliar literatures can be difficult for readers to understand and appreciate due to the aesthetics they…

Purpose: This paper aims to outline the misguided underpinnings of the "word gap" concept promoted by Hart and Risley (1995). This concept posits that a "30 million word gap" between children of poverty and those from affluent households accounts for widespread academic disparities. Based on this premise, there has been a…

This experiment measured teachers' attitudes towards African American English and Academic English. Participants were graduate students of Education at a college in New York City. They completed a paper-and-pencil questionnaire that assessed their explicit attitudes towards the two varieties, as well as a Psycholinguistic Experiment that was…

As African American mothers and teacher educators, the authors' investment in teacher education is both personal and professional. The authors build upon these personal and professional investments in their teaching practices with primarily White pre-service teachers, in the hopes of better preparing them to teach African American children. This…

Defines and illustrates language techniques used by Black authors writing to and for Blacks in the 1960s and 1970s. Suggests how language and theme barriers of such literature might be overcome in a contemporary integrated oral interpretation classroom. (PD)